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Opinion: Barbara Boxer gets some new friends

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For years Barbara Boxer has campaigned, first for Congress, then for the U.S. Senate, as a progressive Democrat strong on women’s rights, children’s rights and the environment. And her campaigns have been built from the ground up, securing small donations from a wide list of supporters both within California and around the nation.

But now that she’s chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, she’s finding some new people who want to be her friend. And not in the MySpace kind of way.

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Roll Call reports (sorry, it’s a subscriber-access page) that Boxer, who assumed the committee chair with the 2006 Democratic takeover of the Senate, received through Aug. 30 about $41,000 from political action committees representing ‘energy, natural resources, construction and transportation industries.’

But in the 2004 cycle, when she was last up for re-election, Boxer ‘reported $18,500 in total receipts from the energy and natural resources sector in all of 2003 and 2004, according to CQ MoneyLine, while the transportation sector donated $35,450, for a two-year total of $53,950 from these industries.’

So it looks like the money’s coming in at a faster pace (or maybe just earlier). And longtime aide and campaign director Rose Kapolczynski, now a partner in Progressive Strategy Partners, told Roll Call that the sudden support from industries with which Boxer has long, well, boxed, won’t affect her positions on issues.

So why is Boxer raising cash so hard three years ahead of time? Because of the possibility that she could be facing off against Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- who has proven to be no slouch at fundraising. Boxer had a relatively easy re-election bid in 2004 when Republican challenger Bill Jones, with low name-recognition despite being the former California secretary of state, never caught traction with voters or money backers.

But Schwarzenegger, if he runs, would be a formidable challenger, given his name recognition and access to cash.

Boxer was raising cash from more traditional supporters Thursday in San Francisco -- with Al Gore as the headliner hours before he was named co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Boxer told reporters that she was preparing to run against ‘whoever the Republicans send at me. I know there’s a big movement within the Republican Party to draft the governor. I don’t know if he will or not.’

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Purely as a spectator sport, it would make for an interesting campaign. Boxer entered Congress in the 1992 ‘year of the woman’ election that came on the heels of the Anita Hill sexual harassment allegations against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, and she has been a vocal advocate for women’s rights throughout her political career.

And the governor, as we all know, has his own history with the issue. Neither Gray Davis nor Phil Angelides could make much hay with that issue. But Boxer on the offensive would carry a different weight.

-- Scott Martelle

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